see the Friends of Liberty State Park website, (www.folsp.org )

Update  5/2003

Governor James McGreevey and NJDEP Commissioner Brad Campbell terminated the 17 year old Development Corp.  This is a major win for all the park users and the activists who made it happen!  Congratulations!  Now everyone's energies can be channeled into improving the park's passive uses and not battling developers and politicians!  This would never have happened with Bret Schundler in any type of public office!

Update  8/27/01

LIFE  AFTER  SCHUNDLER......

"It is a development plan that barely calls for development. So, unlike past public hearings on the future of Liberty State Park in Jersey City, where groups turned out in droves to fight proposed development, a hearing yesterday (8/25/2001) sounded more like a pep rally for conservationists.

The plan grew out of comments made at a public hearing earlier this year (1/27/2001) on several possible development schemes for the park, including more intensive uses such as an aquatic center.

"This is a wonderful, important plan," said Sam Pesin, who heads Friends of Liberty State Park, a group that supports keeping the park free from commercial development. "This plan is a powerful foundation for the preservation and restoration of an urban wildlife habitat."

Representatives from other conservation groups as well as Jersey City Mayor Glenn Cunningham echoed those endorsements.

(Liberty State Park plan is a natural, 08/26/01, BY PAULA SAHA, STAR-LEDGER STAFF)

HISTORY.......

The NJDEP Public Meeting on January 27, 2001 at Liberty State Park was the culmination of the battle against Mayor Bret Schundler's and the park's Development Corporation's proposal for a commercial, privatized Waterpark at Liberty State Park. The vast majority of over 600 people at the public meeting (and of the thousands of communications to Trenton) opposed the Waterpark. Many elected officials and mayoral candidates opposed the Waterpark. It wasn't a good day for Bret, not for a man running for Governor. Though he had retreated from Waterpark support only 3 days before the public meeting because of the writing on the wall (the 37 letters to the editor), he was vehemently booed by the crowd for his double-talk and distortions about his position on the plans.

Opponents of the Waterpark were outraged by the proposed privatization of sacred public parkland next to Miss Liberty and Ellis Island, the destructive consequence of inevitable summer weekend traffic jams, and the taking away of green, open space in this densely populated region. The Waterpark would have been one major attraction too many - with people already coming to the park for the Circle Line Ferry, Liberty Science Center (which is doubling in size) and a multitude of unstructured recreation uses. The private Sports Complex (like a NYC Chelsea Piers) planned for the site across the 2-lane road from the proposed Waterpark expects 3 million users a year within 5 years. The Sports Complex, going into the Jersey City's car pound site, never had public hearings on its potential effects on the limited access roads to the park, etc. One of the developers is the Barry family (see CAMPAIGN FINANCES). For more info on the Waterpark see HART's  WEBSITE   or   LINK.

The main controversy centered on choices framed by a NJDEP Planning Committee for the 42 acre perimeter of the park's interior natural area. Plan I, supported by NJ Audubon, called for about 22 acres of open space, and Plan 2, supported by The Friends of Liberty State Park, provided for 42 acres of open space for unstructured recreation. The main feature of admission-charging structured recreation Plan 3, was the 13 acre commercial Waterpark, which was opposed by over 35 local and statewide organizations, including The Friends of LSP, The LSP Conservancy, NJ Audubon, HART, NJ Sierra Club, NY/NJ Baykeeper, NJ Environmental Federation, NJ Environmental Lobby and numerous neighborhood associations.

During almost a year of NJDEP Planning Committee meetings on the interior perimeter, Schundler never distanced himself from the only swimming plan on the table -- the commercial privatized Waterpark with the park's Development Corporation as the middleman between the private developer and the state of NJ.

Schundler did a survey of school parents and had a JC website survey in order to win support for the Waterpark. This deceitful survey only presented 2 plans, conveniently omitting the open space plan. Using the proposed Waterpark site for open lawns was proposed by the NJDEP as the Committee's starting point months before the survey. When requested by the Committee to provide Waterpark estimates so the public would have a general idea of what the Waterpark would require in size, daily users, and admission costs, Schundler and the Development Corporation brought in a Wisconsin Waterpark developer. They presented the estimates for economic viability for a private developer: about 13 acres, 3500-3700 daily users, and $8- $16 admission fees.

Schundler never suggested that Plan 3 be divided into a commercial Waterpark and a public pool, until a few days before the public meeting, when he decided to retreat. In newspaper stories (The Hudson Reporter, 11/5, and The Jersey Journal, 12/30), he promoted the Waterpark and said that it would boost Hudson County tourism by drawing from the millions of NYC tourists.

In a Jan. news conference, he stated that he has "no problem" with the privatized Waterpark plan on the table, and asserted that an additional 3000 cars a day entering the park would hardly be noticeable at all.

Schundler used taxpayer money to pay for a mailing to 50,000 JC residents and to pay for full-page ads in The Jersey Journal and The Hudson Reporter (and to bring 2 busloads of supporters to the public meeting). The mailing and the ads presented biased and incomplete descriptions of the 3 plans. Though the Committee plans used the terms unstructured recreation and structured recreation, Schundler tried to mislead people by pretending that unstructured recreation in free, open space, which would include non-league, "choose-up" ball playing, was not active recreation. Playing ballgames with friends, families, co-workers, etc. is just as active as paying money to go swimming. Schundler didn't mention the Sports Complex in mailing/ads.

Three days before the public meeting, he finally came out against the Waterpark in order to limit the political damage he had inflicted upon himself by supporting the Waterpark with the Development Corporation, over many months. At the public meeting, he said to a Waterpark opponent that he really didn't fully support the Waterpark, that he was just "amenable" to it. However he wanted to describe his support for, lack of distancing himself from, and talking about the potential benefits of the commercial Waterpark plan, one thing he never did was criticize it at all. Therefore, he clearly was a part of advancing the plan, and was arrogantly ignoring over 25 years of the overwhelming majority public consensus for a free, green park. He was on the wrong side of a plan, which posed a real, destructive threat to the future of our county, state, and national jewel, Liberty State Park.

Sam Pesin,  Friends of Liberty State Park (www.folsp.org ),  contributed to this article above

Photo taken at about 4pm on a  Sunday in July 2001.... LSP is one of the most heavily used state parks.  The tables under the trees and all over the lawn area were filled with families picnicking......

A Jan. 27 public hearing at Liberty Science Center revealed the depth of public anger with the Liberty State Park Development Corp. It operates at cross purposes with the natural and historical preservation missions of the park. It has constantly promoted inappropriate business ventures in the park that are opposed by the community. In 1994, it promoted an 18-hole golf course that was finally rejected by Gov. Christie Whitman.

On Jan. 27, the corporation proposed a commercial Waterpark. When will this end? Why is this group permitted to operate as though Liberty State Park were its private preserve? Why do taxpayers have to subsidize this rogue operation? There is no other such state park "development" entity in New Jersey. When are the Governor and the Legislature going to pull the plug on it?

Steve Lanset